Qualla: Stockline Plastics Factory Explosion

Stockline Plastics Factory Explosion: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Annette Doyle was 32. Tracey McErlane was 27. Timothy Smith was 31. Ann Trench was 34. Thomas McAulay was 41. Margaret Brownlie was 49. Kenneth Murray was 45. Peter Ferguson was 52. Stewart McColl was 60. Nine names. Nine people who went to work at the ICL Plastics factory on Grovepark Street in Maryhill on the morning of 11 May 2004 and never came home. At midday, a corroded liquefied petroleum gas pipe installed beneath the factory in the late 1960s ignited. The four-storey building collapsed in seconds. Thirty-three more were injured, fifteen of them seriously. The families of those who died spent the next five years fighting for the public inquiry that would finally explain why.

Stockline Plastics Factory Explosion: The First Minutes

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The blast came at 11:00 UTC. Approximately a hundred people were at work inside. The first crew to arrive was a Patient Transport Ambulance team who happened to be nearby and made the decision to divert straight to the scene rather than wait for dispatch. Working before reinforce...

Stockline Plastics Factory Explosion: Three Days Searching

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Fire crews worked with sniffer dogs, carbon-dioxide detectors that pick up the breath of trapped people, thermal-imaging cameras, and fibre-optic probes. They pulled seven survivors from the rubble on the first day. The injured went to five Glasgow hospitals - Stobhill, the Weste...

Stockline Plastics Factory Explosion: The Cause That Was Always There

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Early theories were wrong. Some witnesses had seen industrial gas ovens in the coating department explode, but those ovens were later recovered intact. The Health and Safety Executive briefly considered whether there had been any explosion at all, or whether heavy machinery on th...

Stockline Plastics Factory Explosion: Prosecution and Inquiry

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Crown Office decided on 17 February 2006 to prosecute ICL Plastics Limited and ICL Tech Limited under the Health and Safety at Work Act, charging both companies with failing to maintain pipes carrying hazardous gas, failing to ensure the safety of staff and visitors, and fail...

Stockline Plastics Factory Explosion: Lord Gill's Report

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In July 2009, Lord Gill published his report. The inquiry had cost 1.9 million pounds and had taken 13 months from his appointment - which was, by the standards of Scottish public inquiries, fast. The Times would later describe it as 'short, sharp and hard-hitting,' praise that t...